It is always fun to be in the area of Washington where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. I traveled from meetings in Olympia to Ilwaco last week. I met up with Austin Moser, who has been doing the Buoy 10 thing since the first of August. He has sent me some great photos of folks holding up big, bright kings, and I just had to get down there and jump on his boat. Although the tides had been awkward and the bite late, he did get his first coho the day before I arrived. This was good sign. He had the Stanfield clan booked for the day I was there. There was Gordon and Shannon (Mom and Dad) and son Dave and his wife Erica. We left the dock in Astoria at 9:30 and headed for the fishing grounds. We got a good bite soon after we arrived, but it slipped the hook immediately. Later on Gordon landed a beautiful hatchery coho. Eric lost a dandy king right at the boat. We were getting bites on all our baits, we just weren’t sticking them. We did release a wild coho before moving up above the Astoria Bridge. This is where we landed a nice king of about 20 pounds. It was a great day.